Special Operations
I served
with Jerry Shriver in the 5th Corps LRRP company in Germany from 19161
until I left in May of 1962.
He was wild
even then.
T R
THE UNTOLD TRUE
STORY OF MAD DOG SHRIVER:
Mad Dog led dozens of covert missions into Laos & Cambodia until his
luck ran out.
By Maj. John L. Plaster, USAR (Ret.)
There undoubtedly was not a single
recon man in SOG more accomplished or renowned than Mad Dog Shriver.
Mad Dog! In the late 1960s, no
Special Forces trooper at
Ft. Bragg even breathed
those top secret letters, "S-O-G," but everyone had heard of the
legendary Studies and Observations Group Green Beret recon team leader,
Sergeant First Class Jerry Shriver, dubbed a "mad dog" by Radio Hanoi.
It was Jerry Shriver who'd spoken the most famous rejoinder in SOG
history, radioing his superiors not to worry that NVA forces had
encircled his tiny team. "No, no," he explained, "I've got 'em right
where I want 'em -- surrounded from the inside."
Fully decked out, Mad Dog was a
walking arsenal with an imposing array of sawed-off shotgun or
suppressed submachine gun, pistols, knives and grenades. "He looked like
Rambo," First Sergeant Billy Greenwood thought. Blond, tall and thin,
Shriver’s face bore chiseled features around piercing blue eyes. "There
was no soul in the eyes, no emotion," thought SOG Captain Bill O’Rourke.
"They were just eyes."
By early 1969, Shriver was well into
his third continuous year in SOG, leading top secret intelligence
gathering teams deep into the enemy’s clandestine Cambodian sanctuaries
where he’d teased death scores of times. Unknown to him, however, forces
beyond his control at the highest levels of government in Hanoi and
Washington were steering his fate.
The Strategic Picture
Every few weeks of early 1969, the docks at Cambodia's seaport of
Sihanoukville bustled with East European ships offloading to long lines
of Hak Ly Trucking Company lorries. Though ostensibly owned by a Chinese
businessman, the Hak Ly Company's true operator was
North Vietnam's Trinh Sat
intelligence service. The trucks’ clandestine cargo of rockets,
smallarms ammunition and mortar rounds rolled overnight to the heavily
jungled frontier of Kampong Cham Province just three miles from the
border with South Vietnam, a place the Americans had nicknamed the
Fishhook, where vast stockpiles sustained three full enemy divisions,
plus communist units across the border inside South Vietnam -- some
200,000 foes.
Cambodian Prince Sihanouk was well
aware of these neutrality violations; indeed, his fifth wife, Monique,
her mother and half-brother were secretly peddling land rights and
political protection to the NVA; other middlemen were selling rice to
the NVA by the thousands of tons. Hoping to woo Sihanouk away from the
communists, the Johnson Administration had watched passively while
thousands of GIs were killed by communist forces operating from
Cambodia, and not only did nothing about it, but said nothing, even
denied it was happening.
And now, each week of February and
March 1969, more Americans were dying than lost in the Persian Gulf War,
killed by NVA forces that struck quickly then fled back to "neutral”
Cambodia.
Combined with other data, SOG's
Cambodian intelligence appeared on a top secret map which National
Security Adviser Henry Kissinger studied aboard Air Force One at
Brussels airport the morning of 24 February 1969. Sitting with Kissinger
was Colonel Alexander Haig, his military assistant, while representing
the president was White House Chief of Staff H.R. "Bob" Haldeman. During
the new administration's transition, President Nixon had asked Kissinger
to determine how to deal with the Cambodian buildup and counter Hanoi's
"fight and talk" strategy.
While President Nixon addressed
NATO's North Atlantic Council, those aboard Air Force One worked out
details for a clandestine
U.S. response: The secret
bombing of Cambodia's most remote sanctuaries, which would go
unacknowledged unless Prince Sihanouk protested. When Air Force One
departed Brussels, Kissinger briefed President Nixon, who approved the
plan but postponed implementing it. Over the coming three weeks, Nixon
twice warned Hanoi, "we will not tolerate attacks which result in
heavier casualties to our men at a time that we are honestly trying to
seek peace at the conference table in Paris." The day after Nixon's
second warning, the NVA bombarded Saigon with 122mm rockets obviously
smuggled through Cambodia. Three days later, Nixon turned loose the
B-52s on the Fishhook, the first secret Cambodian raid, which set off 73
secondary explosions.
A Special SOG Mission
Not one peep eminated from Phnom Penh or Hanoi and here was a fitting
irony: For four years the North Vietnamese had denied their presence in
Cambodia, and now, with U.S. bombs falling upon them, they could say
nothing. Nixon suspended further B-52 strikes in hopes Hanoi's
negotiators might begin productive discussions in Paris, but the talks
droned on pointlessly.
To demonstrate that America, too,
could "talk and fight," President Nixon approved a second secret B-52
strike, this time against a target proposed by General Creighton Abrams
with Ambassador Bunker's endorsement: COSVN, the Central Office for
South Vietnam, the almost mythical Viet Cong headquarters which claimed
to run the whole war. An NVA deserter had pinpointed the COSVN complex
14 miles southeast of Memot, Cambodia, in the Fishhook,
just a mile beyond the South Vietnamese border. The COSVN raid was laid
on for 24 April.
Apprised of the upcoming B-52 strike,
Brigadier General Philip Davidson, the MACV J-2, thought that instead of
just bombing COSVN, a top secret SOG raiding force should hit the enemy
headquarters as soon as the bombs stopped falling. He phoned Colonel
Steve Cavanaugh, Chief SOG, who agreed and ordered the Ban Me Thuot-based
Command and Control South, CCS, to prepare a Green Beret-led company of
Montagnard mercenaries for the special mission.
At CCS, the historic COSVN raid fell
upon its most accomplished man, that living recon legend, Mad Dog
Shriver, and Captain Bill O'Rourke. Though O'Rourke would command the
company-size raiding force, Shriver equally would influence the
operation, continuing an eight-month collaboration they’d begun when
they ran recon together.
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"Ready to insert
deep into
Cambodia
on a covert operation, "Mad Dog" carries his trusty suppressed
Grease Gun, Gerber fighting knife and plenty of grenades." (Photo by
Medal of Honor winner, Jim Fleming) |
Mad Dog -- the Man and the Myth
There was no one at CCS quite like
Mad Dog Shriver. Medal of Honor recipient Jim Fleming, who flew USAF
Hueys for SOG, found Shriver, "the quintessential warrior-loner,
anti-social, possessed by what he was doing, the best team, always
training, constantly training." Shriver rarely spoke and walked around
camp for days wearing the same clothes. In his sleep he cradled a loaded
rifle, and in the club he'd buy a case of beer, open every can, then go
alone to a corner and drink them all. Though he'd been awarded a Silver
Star, five Bronze Stars and the Soldiers Medal, the 28-year-old Green
Beret didn’t care about decorations.
But he did care about the Montagnard
hill tribesmen, and spent all his money on them, even collected food,
clothes, whatever people would give, to distribute in Yard villages. He
was the only American at CCS who lived in the Montagnard barracks. "He
was almost revered by the Montagnards," O'Rourke says.
Shriver's closest companion was a
German shepherd he'd brought back from Taiwan which he named Klaus. One
night Klaus got sick on beer some recon men fed him and crapped on the
NCO club floor; they rubbed his nose in it and threw him out. Shriver
arrived, drank a beer, removed his blue velvet smoking jacket and derby
hat, put a .38 revolver on a table, then dropped his pants and defecated
on the floor. "If you want to rub my nose in this," he dared, "come on
over." Everyone pretended not to hear him; one man who'd fed Klaus beer
urged the Recon Company commander to intervene. The captain laughed in
his face.
"He had this way of looking at you
with his eyes half-open," recon man Frank Burkhart remembers. "If he
looked at me like that, I'd just about freeze."
Shriver always had been different. In
the early 1960s, when Rich Ryan served with him in the 7th Army's Long
Range Patrol Company in Germany, Shriver’s buddies called him "Digger"
since they thought he looked like an undertaker. As a joke his LRRP
comrades concocted their own religion, "The Mahoganites," which
worshipped a mahogany statue. "So we would carry Shriver around on an
empty bunk with a sheet over him and candles on the corners," recalled
Ryan, "and chant, 'Maaa-haa-ga-ney, Maaa-haa-ga-ney.' Scared the hell
out of new guys."
Medal of Honor recipient Fleming says
Shriver "convinced me that for the rest of my life I would not go into a
bar and cross someone I didn't know."
But no recon man was better in the
woods. "He was like having a dog you could talk to," O'Rourke explained.
"He could hear and sense things; he was more alive in the woods than any
other human being I've ever met." During a company operation on the
Cambodian border Shriver and an old Yard compatriot were sitting against
a tree, O'Rourke recalled. "Suddenly he sat bolt upright, they looked at
each other, shook their heads and leaned back against the tree. I'm
watching this and wondering, what the hell's going on? And all of a
sudden these birds flew by, then a nano-second later, way off in the
distance, 'Boom-boom!' -- shotguns. They'd heard that, ascertained what
it was and relaxed before I even knew the birds were flying."
Shriver once went up to SOG’s Command
and Control North for a mission into the DMZ where Captain Jim Storter
encountered him just before insert. "He had pistols stuck everywhere on
him, I mean, he had five or six .38 caliber revolvers." Storter asked
him, "Sergeant Shriver, would you like a CAR-15 or M-16 or something?
You know the DMZ is not a real mellow area to go into." But Mad Dog
replied, "No, them long guns'll get you in trouble and besides, if I
need more than these I got troubles anyhow."
Rather than stand down after an
operation, Shriver would go out with another team. "He lived for the
game; that's all he lived for," Dale Libby, a fellow CCS man said.
Shriver once promised everyone he was going on R&R but instead sneaked
up to Plei Djerang Special Forces camp to go to the field with Rich
Ryan's A Team.
During a short leave stateside in
1968, fellow Green Beret Larry White hung out with Shriver, whose only
real interest was finding a lever action .444 Marlin rifle. Purchasing
one of the powerful Marlins, Shriver shipped it back to SOG so he could
carry it into Cambodia, "to bust bunkers," probably the only levergun
used in the war.
And the Real Jerry Shriver
Unless you were one of Mad Dog's close friends, the image was perfect
prowess -- but the truth was, Shriver confided to fellow SOG Green Beret
Sammy Hernadez, he feared death and didn't think he'd live much longer.
He'd beat bad odds too many times, and could feel a terrible payback
looming.
"He wanted to quit," Medal of Honor
winner Fred Zabitosky could see. "He really wanted to quit, Jerry did. I
said, 'Why don't you just tell them I want off, I don't want to run any
more?' He said he would but he never did; just kept running."
The 5th Special Forces Group
executive officer, Lieutenant Colonel Charlie Norton, had been watching
SOG recon casualties skyrocket and grew concerned about men like Mad Dog
whose lives had become a continuous flirtation with death. Norton went
to the 5th Group commander and urged, "Don't approve the goddamn
extensions these guys are asking for. You approve it again, your chances
of killing that guy are very, very good." But the group commander
explained SOG needed experienced men for its high priority missions.
"Bullshit," Norton snapped, "you're signing that guy's death warrant."
Eventually 5th Group turned down a few extensions but only a very few;
the most experienced recon men never had extensions denied. Never.
"Mad Dog was wanting to get out of
recon and didn't know how," said recon team leader Sonny Franks, though
the half-measure came when Shriver left recon to join his teammate
O’Rourke’s raider company. And now the COSVN raid would make a fitting
final operation; Shriver could face his fear head-on, charge right into
COSVN’s mysterious mouth and afterward at last call it quits.
Into COSVN’s Mouth
The morning of 24 April 1969, while high-flying B-52s winged their way
from distant Guam, the SOG raider company lined up beside the airfield
at Quan Loi, South Vietnam, only 20 miles southeast of COSVN's secret
lair.
But just five Hueys were flyable that
morning, enough to lift only two platoons; the big bombers could not be
delayed, which meant Lieutenant Bob Killebrew's 3rd Platoon would have
to stand by at Quan Loi while the 1st Platoon under First Lieutenant
Walter Marcantel, and 2nd Platoon under First Lieutenant Greg Harrigan,
raided COSVN. Capt. O'Rourke and Mad Dog didn't like it, but they could
do nothing.*
Nor could they do anything about
their minimal fire support. Although whole waves of B-52s were about to
dump thousands of bombs into COSVN, the highly classified Cambodian
Rules of Engagement forbad tactical air strikes; it was better to lose
an American-led SOG team, the State Department rules suggested, then
leave documentable evidence that U.S. F4 Phantoms had bombed this
"neutral" territory. It was a curious logic so concerned about telltale
napalm streaks or cluster bomb fins, but unconcerned about B-52 bomb
craters from horizon to horizon. Chief SOG Cavanaugh found the
contradiction "ridiculous," but he could not change the rules.
The B-52 contrails were not yet
visible when the raiding force Hueys began cranking and the raiders
boarded; Capt. O'Rourke would be aboard the first bird and Shriver on
the last so they'd be at each end of the landing Hueys. As they lifted
off for the ten-minute flight, the B-52s were making final alignments
for the run-in. Minutes later the lead chopper had to turn back because
of mechanical problems; O'Rourke could only wish the others Godspeed.
Command passed to an operations officer in the second bird who'd come
along for the raid, Captain Paul Cahill.
Momentarily the raiders could see
dirt geysers bounding skyward amid collapsing trees. Then as the dust
settled a violin-shaped clearing took form and the Hueys descended
in-trail, hovered for men to leap off, then climbed away.
Then fire exploded from all
directions, horrible fire that skimmed the ground and mowed down anyone
who didn’t dive into a bomb crater or roll behind a fallen treetrunk.
From the back of the LZ, Mad Dog
radioed that a machinegun bunker to his left-front had his *(Greg
Harrigan and I had been boyhood friends in northeast Minneapolis.) men
pinned and asked if anyone could fire at it to relieve the pressure.
Holed up in a bomb crater beneath murderous fire, Capt. Cahill, 1st Lt.
Marcantel and a medic, Sergeant Ernest Jamison, radioed that they were
pinned, too. Then Jamison dashed out to retrieve a wounded man; heavy
fire cut him down, killing him on the spot.
No one else could engage the
machinegun that trapped Shriver's men -- it was up to Mad Dog. Skittish
Yards looked to Shriver and his half-grin restored a sense of
confidence. Then they were on their feet, charging -- Shriver was his
old self, running to the sound of guns, a True Believer Yard on either
side, all of them dashing through the flying bullets, into the treeline,
into the very guts of Mad Dog's great nemesis, COSVN.
And Mad Dog Shriver was never seen
again.
The Fight Continues
At the other end of the LZ, Jamison's body lay just a few yards from the
crater where Capt. Cahill heard bullets cracking and RPGs rocking the
ground. When Cahill lifted his head, an AK round hit him in the mouth,
deflected up and destroyed an eye. Badly wounded, he collapsed.
In a nearby crater, young Lt. Greg
Harrigan directed helicopter gunships whose rockets and mini-guns were
the only thing holding off the aggressive NVA. Already, Harrigan
reported, more than half his platoon were killed or wounded. For 45
minutes the Green Beret lieutenant kept the enemy at bay, then Harrigan,
too, was hit. He died minutes later.
Bill O'Rourke tried to land on
another helicopter but his bird couldn't penetrate the NVA veil of lead.
Lieutenant Colonel Earl Trabue, their CCS Commander, arrived and flew
overhead with O’Rourke but they could do little.
Hours dragged by. Wounded men laid
untreated, exposed in the sun. Several times the Hueys attempted to
retrieve them and each time heavy fire drove them off. One door gunner
was badly wounded. Finally a passing Australian twin-jet Canberra bomber
from No. 2 Squadron at Phan Rang heard their predicament on the
emergency radio frequency, ignored the fact it was Cambodia, and dropped
a bombload which, O’Rourke reports, "broke the stranglehold those guys
were in, and it allowed us to go in." Only 1st Lt. Marcantel was still
directing air, and finally he had to bring ordnance so close it wounded
himself and his surviving nine Montagnards.
One medic ran to Harrigan's hole and
attempted to lift his body out but couldn't. "They were pretty well
drained physically and emotionally," O'Rourke said. Finally, three Hueys
raced in and picked up 15 wounded men. Lieutenant Dan Hall carried out a
radio operator, then managed to drag Lt. Harrigan's body to an aircraft.
Thus ended the COSVN raid.
A Time for Reflection
Afterward Chief SOG Cavanaugh talked to survivors and learned, "The fire
was so heavy and so intense that even the guys trying to [evade] and
move out of the area were being cut down." It seemed almost an ambush.
"That really shook them up at MACV, to realize anybody survived that
[B-52] strike," Col. Cavanaugh said.
The heavy losses especially affected
Brig. Gen. Davidson, the MACV J-2, who blamed himself for the
catastrophe. "General," Chief SOG Cavanaugh assured him, "if I'd have
felt we were going to lose people like that, I wouldn't have put them in
there."
It’s that ambush-like reception
despite a B-52 strike that opens the disturbing possibility of treachery
and, it turns out, it was more than a mere possibility. One year after
the COSVN raid, the NSA twice intercepted enemy messages warning of
imminent SOG operations which could only have come from a mole or moles
in SOG headquarters. It would only be long after the war that it became
clear Hanoi’s Trinh Sat had penetrated SOG, inserting at least one high
ranking South Vietnamese officer in SOG whose treachery killed untold
Americans, including, most likely, the COSVN raiders.
Of those raiders, Lt. Walter
Marcantel survived his wounds only to die six months later in a
parachuting accident at Ft. Devens,
Mass., while Capt. Paul
Cahill was medically retired. Eventually, Green Beret medic Ernest
Jamison's body was recovered.
But those lost in the COSVN raid have
not been forgotten. Under a beautiful spring sky on Memorial Day, 1993,
with American flags waving and an Army Reserve Huey strewing flower
petals as it passed low-level, members of Special Forces Association
Chapter XX assembled at Lt. Greg Harrigan’s grave in Minneapolis,
Minn. Before the young
lieutenant’s family, a Special Forces honor guard placed a green beret
at his grave, at last conferring some recognition to the fallen SOG man,
a gesture the COSVN raid’s high classification had made impossible a
quarter-century earlier. Until now, neither Harrigan’s family nor the
families of the other lost men knew the full story of the top secret
COSVN raid.
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Green Berets of
Chap. XX, Special Forces Assoc. & the Harrigan family gather for
1995 memorial service at the
Minneapolis
grave of young Lt. Greg Harrigan, killed in the top secret SOG raid
on COSVN in which Mad Dog became MIA.(Photo-John Murphy)
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But the story remains incomplete. As
in the case of SOG’s other MIAs, Hanoi continues to deny any knowledge
of Jerry Shriver.
Capt. O'Rourke concluded Mad Dog died
that day. "I felt very privileged to have been his friend," O’Rourke
says, "and when he died I grieved as much as for my younger brother when
he was killed. Twenty some-odd years later, it still sticks in my craw
that I wasn't there. I wish I had been there."
There remains a popular myth among
SOG veterans, that any day now Mad Dog Shriver will emerge from the
Cambodian jungle as if only ten minutes have gone by, look right and
left and holler, "Hey! Where’d everybody go?" Indeed, to those who knew
him and fought beside him, Mad Dog will live forever.
(This article is derived from
Maj. Plaster’s book, SOG: The Secret Wars of America’s Commandos
in Vietnam, published by Simon & Schuster.)
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